Jesmyn Ward's award winning novel

Some big names have won the US National Book Award for Fiction including William Faulkner, Philip Roth, Alice Walker and Annie Proulx. Now, American writer Jesmyn Ward is the latest to be added to the list. She won the award last year for her second novel Salvage the Bones. It's a poetic and brutal book set over 12 days in the lead-up to Hurricane Katrina. It's something Jesmyn knows about well because in 2005 she experienced the wrath of the hurricane herself. The novel looks at a family who live in a fictional Mississippi town and the story revolves around Esch -- a lone girl among many men -- and her relationship with her brother Skeetah and his beloved fighting dog China. It's about the ties that bind this family struggling to survive.